The Record: Shoot for the moon

FORTY-FIVE YEAR anniversaries are not usually notable. Yet this past week marked such an anniversary of man's first walk on the Moon. Five years from now, there will be more to say about an event that unified the world for a brief moment in time. But there is something to say today – something more than words of nostalgia – about a time when America looked up to the stars.

The irony is that our federal government, once willing to fund the exploration of space, cannot easily agree on the building of highways. Where the children of the '60s imagined a future where they might travel to the stars, the children of the early 21st century may have trouble imagining a future where the roads and bridges are in good repair.

There is no surprise then that a nation that cannot commit to building an infrastructure for the present – let alone the future – does not see benefit in the manned exploration of space. No doubt the race to the Moon was driven by a rivalry with the Soviets. President John F. Kennedy was able to politically capitalize on a nationalism that just doesn't exist anymore.

In the early '60s there were Democrats and Republicans, but the moon race was not about partisan politics. The moon race was about America being a great nation capable of doing the impossible. Such a sentiment today would either be viewed as naive or an excuse to expand a federal program.

Americans under the age of 50 cannot imagine how people came together during the days of Apollo 11. Space launches were well watched on televisions without hundreds of channels. And as news spread that the Eagle – the lunar landing craft – had landed, there was a shared celebration across the country: America got to the Moon first.

Fans of the television show "Mad Men" got a glimpse of that time in this season's finale. Yet a TV show cannot duplicate a lived moment in history. This week was not a week when men, women and children looked to the heavens, except perhaps if they were in the troubled Middle East, where missiles were aimed at the people of Israel and into Gaza. Or in Ukraine, where recovery workers try to understand who fired a missile at a civilian aircraft, killing all passengers and crew.

The Tea Party will find no mention of exploration in the Constitution. The Founding Fathers did not set this grand experiment in democracy into motion to reach the Moon, or at least they did not write words to that effect. But the very enterprise of creating this nation was one of exploration. The first Americans were people with feet planted firmly on the ground who dared to see a different kind of government, a different kind of nation where people regardless of who they were or what they believed could live in freedom.

There is little vision in Congress today. The objectives are small and petty. Political gain trumps public policy. So 45 years after man walked on the Moon, America is no longer committed to reach for the stars or the planets. Exploration is a luxury we do not choose to fund. We have lost something precious: our curiosity of the unknown and our desire to push beyond boundaries.

And while at present Republicans in the House appear the meaner of the two major political parties, neither aisle leads in the correct direction. Instead of raising us as a nation, these men and women move us to the right or the left. Neither is looking up.